While nothing can top last year’s mega-huge reveal that Disney was buying LucasFilm with an eye toward making a brand-new trilogy, today’s announcement that Zack Snyder will direct a standalone Star Wars film separate from that new trilogy is still pretty massive.

Vulture broke the news this afternoon, stating that Snyder – who took himself out of the running for directing the newly announced Episode VII – will instead develop a new Star Wars project for the company. The new feature will be inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s seminal Seven Samurai, and will apparently run parallel to events in the new trilogy.

Vulture’s source isn’t sure where the new film will fall exactly in the series chronology, but they believe it will be separate from the numbered entries, and that it will take place at some point after Return of the Jedi.

Judging by the fact that Kurosawa’s film is an inspiration (not particularly shocking since the director’s The Hidden Fortress was an inspiration for the original Lucas film), we can guess that a group of Jedi will have to protect a small colony of peaceful people from aggressive local bandits. It should make for a pretty cool film.

The most recent example of Lucas paying homage to Seven Samurai came in this Clone Wars episode, titled "Bounty Hunters."

We don’t know much more than that at this stage, but if we’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that the Star Wars universe can sustain a wide range of characters and stories without being tied to the main narrative. We suspect that Snyder’s project will be able to coexist peacefully with the new trilogy, and may well help Disney achieve its stated goal of releasing a new Star Wars film every two years. Early speculation has this project moving into production after Episode VII gets underway, so it might make for a nice gap closer between that entry and Episode VIII.

What do you think? We like the idea of Kurosawa’s film getting a Star Wars update, so we’ve got our fingers crossed this all comes to pass. We’ll keep you updated on this project and the developments with Episode VII as Disney reveals more details.

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